Age of Empires IV (2021)

Age of Empires IV marks the series’ return sixteen years after its predecessor. With its original developer, Ensemble Studios, now defunct, this entry is developed by new RTS stalwart studio Relic Entertainment, the team behind the Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War games and the Company of Heroes series.

Going in, I heard contention regarding the art style of the units and the first impression is something does feel off about them. It’s like the detail and fidelity of the terrain is higher than the units. It causes the units to “pop-out” against the terrain but not necessarily in a pleasing manner. Some are regarding this as “cartoonish” but it does also help with identifying types of units as a newer player, like myself, but overall I don’t think this game looks that impressive graphically. Animations are pretty standard and the level of detail is sometimes lacking. Many of the game’s 8 civilizations have striking similarities visually and don’t offer too many unique appearances. I think this game could certainly look better but it ultimately didn’t affect my enjoyment with the gameplay.

Age of Empire IV doesn’t do a whole lot to change the RTS formula; you’ll still be constructing a base of defensive structures and helpful buildings to harvest resources that fuel your economy and ultimately your military. The game features a Rock Paper Scissors style counter system that will be familiar to many RTS players: cavalry units counter most infantry and archers, archers counter many slow infantry units, and pikeman counter cavalry units, with various other niche and unique interactions. Similar strategies hold true for siege weapons that all have their respective strengths and weaknesses versus buildings, infantry, and other siege weapons. While cavalry units have an advantage over non pike-wielding infantry they don’t dynamically trample through in a charge like in much older RTS games like Lord of the Rings: Battle For Middle Earth or the Total War franchise. It was always a letdown when I led a cavalry charge into unsuspecting enemies, expecting to cut through effortlessly, only for my horses to awkwardly surround the enemy as opposed to charging straight through. I suppose this is done for balancing reasons, as having live units being knocked down would be a logistic nightmare in terms of balance and physics work, but it is a bit of an immersion breaker at times with how mounted units and their lack of momentum works.

The campaign features 38 missions over 4 campaigns (Normans, French, Mongols, and Rus) covering real historical events from 500-1500AD such as the Battle of Hastings and Joan of Arc at Orleans. There’s a decent mix of objectives, with attacks and defenses of castle sieges, missions where you are on either side of a rout (learning to press advantage versus cutting your losses), and long holdouts against overwhelming odds. These missions are interspersed with absolutely stunning production on the cutscenes, mixing real-world and in-game footage to produce some made for television videos that are extremely polished and sharp. It’s not quite the level of the newer Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tours, but it certainly does have that element of being a “fun way to learn” about history. There are additional documentary- style videos for history buffs to go nuts over as well.

In addition to the campaign, there’s plenty of challenges with unlockable banners/sigils/portraits. The Art of War challenges (timed single-player missions that award bronze, silver, and gold medals based on completion time) are great. They act as an engaging and fun secondary tutorial that feature some guidance in the form of introductory videos and onscreen popup reminders of tips. The pace is frenetic, especially when gunning for some of the gold medal times, and they seem actually helpful in teaching economic, military, and siege strategies for both the early and late game. I was tentative given my inexperience with the genre heading in but these challenges onboarded some crucial knowledge while being entertaining and probably helped in keeping me interested in the game.

There is also competitive multiplayer or skirmishes that can be done with bots. Some are disappointed by the game only having 8 civs as opposed to the myriad of choices in older games (AOE II ended up with 39 civs to choose from). While I’m not as familiar with the franchise, I feel that the 8 civs in AOE IV offer enough depth and variety and have some wild changes amongst them that make some play radically different from each other. I think perhaps these devs went with “quality over quantity” and made fewer more substantially different civs than a vast variety of less unique choices.

This game is currently only on PC and I ran it on an RTX 3070 at 1440p with little to no issue technically. There is some minor flicker on trees for the in-game cutscenes and the game will hang for a second or so when it autosaves mid-campaign mission. Other than that the game ran flawlessly for me in my 30+ hours playing and given that it isn’t that graphically impressive I would imagine it’s able to be run on a variety of configurations.

Age of Empires IV isn’t reinventing the wheel but it’s polished with a nice presentation and is engaging to play. The campaign is substantial in length and has a top-tier level of production. While your mileage may vary on the artistic choices, I think there’s a great time to be had here even if you aren’t a diehard fan of the series or the genre, and given that there are so few RTS games nowadays this seems great and I had a lot of fun playing.

Main + Extras – 34h 50m 15s

Score: 8/10 (Great)